


Prompt: Secret Admirer

by depugnare



Series: Black Sails Tumblr Drabbles [20]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Books, Get Together, Love Letters, M/M, Modern AU, Secret Admirer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 21:01:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17885153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depugnare/pseuds/depugnare
Summary: Every Saturday, Silver wakes up and looks out the window to his fire escape to see a new book.





	Prompt: Secret Admirer

Every Saturday, Silver wakes up and looks out the window to his fire escape to see a new book, carefully wrapped in plastic to protect it from any sudden inclement weather. He stretches and gets up, scratching at his scalp while he rummages around for a sock for his leg, grabbing the first one he touches in the drawer and putting it on. Leans down to strap on his leg before making his way out the window and onto the fire escape.

It’s not snowing, thankfully, but over the smell of the greek restaurant under his apartment, there’s a sharp scent to the air that tells him it will soon. He grabs the book and goes back inside. Curls up in the chair he’d managed to squeeze into his bedroom and opens the bag. Inside is a well-worn copy of Don Quixote.

Silver’s brow furrows. He’s been receiving these books for three months now, and each time before this they’d been more contemporary novels. Even a collection of poetry that had kept Silver up late into the night, mind swirling with images of far off places. This is out of place among them.

He doesn’t know who leaves the books, only knows that they’ve been doing it since he left one of his own out on the fire escape after a long night and he’d woken up to see it wrapped in a ziploc bag with a note telling him to take better care of his things.

He’d been grateful, because it was raining that night and it was a book he and Madi had used to read together.

He’d left another book out and the next weekend he’d received another lecture by note, and a new book tucked in with his crappy romance novel he’d bought at the airport years ago.

Now he stares down at the book in his hand and he can feel he’s only one of many who have held this book. There’s no note outside, but inside there is a post-it note.

 _I finally saw you_ , it says and if Silver was thinking like the New Yorker he’s been for the past 10 years, he would pack up and move. He’s not though. Is calm as he reads the rest of the note.

_You’re different than I imagined. Shorter than I thought._

“Fuck you,” Silver mutters.

_Handsome too._

“Okay, I take t back.”

_This book has been instrumental in my life. Not because the story itself means something, but because something unexpected always seems to happen after I re-read it. Right now, I think it’s the fact that I know you. You’re the man who works in the office across the hall from mine._

Silver squints as he tires to think who it could be. Knows there’s a fancy office of dubious purpose across the hall from the independent magazine he works at. Tries to think of all the people he’s seen go in and out. A man taller than he has any right to be and always hauling some box or another. A lady with dark hair always pulled into an elegant updo. A short, squat older man with a shiny bald head. And-

“Oh,” Silver says softly, looking down at the note. “Freckles?”

The man named so for the fact that under a pair of surly eyebrows and a head of bright red hair, the apparent boss of that fancy office had a smattering of freckles across his cheeks that always made Silver stare when he bumped into him.

 _I believe you and I may be on less friendly terms in the office_  the note continues.  _But I would like to change that. Read this book, if you have the time this weekend, and I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on Monday during lunch around noon in the cafe near work._

_~ James Flint_

Silver runs his hand over the name, saying it a few times. It’s the sort of name that suits the person it belongs to. He wants to, but the question remains as to how this James Flint even came across his apartment in the first place. He flips the note over and he smiles when he sees there’s writing there too.

_P.S. I’m sure this sounds unusual to you, but I swear I’m not stalking you. A business partner lives in the building next to yours. I saw your book from her living room window, and I wasn’t exactly in the most sober state of mind. It just so happens that our lives seem to overlap a bit more than that._

Silver smiles again, fingers tracing the note. He settles down in the chair and starts to read.

_“Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago-”_

_\- - -_

On Monday morning, Silver was early to work. Practically flew into his cubicle to get his work done in a flurry of typing. This wasn’t too out of character, but when he didn’t show up in the break room for his usual 11:30 cup of coffee, Max appeared in his cubicle instead.

“What the fuck is up with you?” she asks, hands on her hips as she looks down at him. He glances up at her after he sends his final draft to the editor.

“Nothing, why?” he asks, turning to face her. 

Her eyes narrow, meaning she’s noticed that he’s wearing actual pants today, and not sweatpants.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she says, accent thick on the last word in the way she knows drives him insane because that’s not how she talks.

“I am not. I’m going out for lunch today.”

“You getting fucked on your lunchbreak or what?” she asks, watching him tidy up. “You’ve never left for lunch before.”

“Well I am now,” he says, gathering up all his things. By the time he works his way through the lunch rush to the one working elevator and down the street to the cafe, he’ll be cutting it close. 

“I’ll be back at one!” he calls over his shoulder, hurrying away. 

He gets in line for the elevator, glaring at all the people he knows are perfectly capable of taking the three flights down to the main lobby. Finally makes his way down at a quarter to twelve and bursts out of the elevator the moment the doors open. Hurries down the street through the lunchtime bustle before slipping into Eleanor’s Cafe.

He doesn’t see him at first, but then, with a book in his hand of course, he sees Flint sitting at a table by the window. He goes over to him and Flint looks up when Silver sets his coat down in the chair across from him.

“James?” Silver asks and he smiles. Silver blushes at how much it softens his face.

“That’s me,” he says. “You can call me Flint if you like.”

“Flint,” Silver says, liking how his tongue presses against his teeth when he says it. “I’m John Silver, but you can call me Silver.”

“Any reason why?” Flint asks, watching him sit down.

“I don’t like John,” Silver says, watching him. Reaches into his bag and pulls out the worn Don Quixote book. “You wanted to talk about this?”

Flint smiles.

“I did.”

“Any reason you left all the lines about Dulcinea underlined?” Silver says, opening the book.

“Let everyone in the world halt,” Flint says with a grin, without needing to look at the book. “Unless the entire world acknowledges that nowhere on earth is there a damsel more beautiful than the Empress of La Mancha, she who has no equal, Dulcinea Del Toboso.“ 

“I’m not a damsel,” Silver says, mouth curving into a smile. Flint huffs.

“I should hope not. The rest, however, is true.”

“I doubt that,” Silver says, setting the book down. “But if you’re trying to woo me, it’s working.”

“Good,” says Flint. “Now comes the hard part: how do you like your coffee?”


End file.
